Dominate your Stretch Drive!

by Perfect SkatingJanuary 31, 2018

Dominate your Stretch Drive by not “working easy”.

Ah!! We can feel that February coming. We made it past the cold (in some places), dark early mornings and afternoons of January to the days getting a little longer and a little lighter at 6am in the morning. Is the end really in sight? It’s kind of the same way with the hockey season, players are on the backstretch but still so much hockey left, so much work and preparation for that stretch drive or playoff push. How to stay on top?

Every NHLer knows about the February Blues and no, St.Louis Fans we ain’t talking about your boys. Barry Trotz talks about it all the time, you got to dig in a little deeper when everyone wants to “work a little easy”. As a matter of fact he’d use this saying to describe lazy players, it was Trotzy’s polite way of saying a player was a DOG… and that was never good…

Back to the February Blues, what does that mean? It’s tough to stay on it all the time, I mean, every time and again we are all guilty of “working a little easy” and that’s ok, we are all not perfect. The key is to build resilience and for us that’s a combination of discipline and motivation.

Discipline really sets your tone and constantly checks and re-checks your DNA. It’s that burning desire inside of you to do things right...all the time. Think about almost getting there, almost reaching that goal, almost completing...winners compete and complete. It’s the player who stays on it, that continues to focus on the end result that finds a way to never be subject of the saying “almost is always never good enough”. They just don’t go there and in the rare occasion that they fall into the trap it’s for a blink of an eye, they seem to have this trigger that jolts them right back on track. They are motivated by the execution of the present.

Talk about Motivation. Where do you find your MOJO? Let’s face it, God created us to be happy. Happiness in something spurs a motivation to continue finding it. That could be a little different for everyone but one thing we’ve found by working with so many elite athletes is that for every one of them, the reason is important...really important. Find your Why and your MOJO will find you, we promise.

Discipline + Motivation allows a ton of great movement and skill expressions too. They both foster the little details. It could be working on weight shift sequences to improve glide so those tough down the stretch shifts build a little less lactate or how about details in game play like being detailed to stop and start to execute short game support. Build a resilient game.

Stay on the Discipline and Motivation train, be motivated by the execution of the present and as one of our greatest mentors would say “don’t let yourself fall into the trap of working easy”.